Do you take this woman to be your wife? I bamboo! Weddings in panda enclosure

When giant pandas Tian Tian and Yang Guang arrive in Edinburgh tomorrow, they will become a huge attraction for thousands of tourists.

However, their £275,000 enclosures will also become a showcase for a very different kind of event – weddings.

For £3,000 for half an hour, or almost £6,000 for a full hour, couples will be able to rent the enclosure area for themselves and their guests and tie the knot in front of Edinburgh’s most famous bears.

Edinburgh Zoo is a fully-licensed wedding venue and couples can conduct a civil ceremony anywhere on the site. As reported in The Scotsman yesterday, corporate hospitality packages costing £12,000 will be available as soon as the two pandas are settled.

Couples will not be permitted to enter the pandas’ enclosures, and any ceremony would take place on the wooden walkways that allow visitors to glimpse the bears through thick glass screens.

“As is the case with the company packages, brides and grooms would need to buy all the tickets available in a half hour or hour-long slot to have the panda space to themselves.

A spokesman for the zoo said: “There is nothing in principle to stop people getting married in the enclosure area. The zoo has the commercial platforms for this to be realised.

“If someone wanted to we would welcome any inquiries – every penny would go back into the charity coffers.”

Alistair McArthur, a car-delivery driver who married his wife Angela in a civil ceremony at the zoo in 2005, said he would “definitely” have opted to marry in front of the pandas.

“Having the pandas there would have been a fantastic idea – bringing people up from England to see something like that would have been just amazing.”

Asked if he would have been prepared to pay the thousands of pounds extra, he replied: “It’s my wife, of course I would.”

However, Henry Nicholls, author of The Way of the Panda, defended the zoo’s commercial interests, but questioned the appeal of a wedding in front of two captive animals.

“If you admit that these are commercial entities then anything goes. The market dictates what happens to the pandas.

“The zoo has got a tricky balancing act, and it’s a constant process of building up an image.

“Pandas are pretty relaxed about these kind of things, but it’s just a bit weird that anyone would want to do that.”

Jennifer O’Mahony